


Conditions of Luminescence

by Skowronek



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Actors, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Falling In Love, Filming, Light Angst, M/M, Movie AU, Mutual Pining, Pining, Platonic Cuddling, Self Indulgent Use of Tropes, Yuuri can do ballet in every universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-18
Updated: 2018-08-18
Packaged: 2019-06-29 08:30:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15725715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skowronek/pseuds/Skowronek
Summary: When Yuuri Katsuki lands a role in Minako Okukawa’s new drama, he doesn’t expect to struggle as much as he does  - both with his role and with his growing feelings towards his legendary co-star, Viktor Nikiforov.He is not sure whether their entirely platonic cuddling sessions are of any help, either.





	Conditions of Luminescence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eternalsunshine13](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternalsunshine13/gifts).



> This is my piece for the first issue of Shall We Read - the YOI litmag. It was such a pleasure to be a part of this! 
> 
> Special thanks to Cady, who was absolutely wonderful and as always, enabled all the words that happened to be written.

 

 

“And cut!”

There’s a pause. Then the lights dim, slow like falling curtains. It feels as if the noise is delayed, but soon it washes over Yuuri, wave-like, and drenches him in the cool ebb and flow of loud voices.

He blinks himself out of his mood, no longer holding his pose. He comes out of his attitude derrière and even before the ball of his foot touches the floor, he comes back into himself, too. He’s Katsuki Yuuri, 24, starring in Minako Okukawa’s newest drama.

Moments ago, he was M., Okukawa’s restless recluse of a protagonist, dancing away in an empty studio, lights blinking the heartache out of his fouettés. Moments ago, he was twirling with the ghost of Mikhail, his hands reaching out to the invisible currents of his body.

Mikhail’s gone now, too. Yuuri blinks his eyes open, and there he is, Victor, radiant, and the lights are playing tricks in his hair. He quirks his lips into a smile that Yuuri thinks is very out of place. He only ever sees it painted against pale hotel walls in the mornings.

Perhaps he should say something, anything. Viktor looks as if he were expecting it. There’s this light hesitance in his body that Yuuri can read now so fluently, easily. He saw it once, he remembers, when they first met, so many pages of the script ago.

“That’s a wrap for today!” he hears then, and before he reacts, Minako is there, grabbing his arm and dragging him away from the set. “Yuuri, let’s talk for a second!”

He lets her take the lead but stubbornly turns his head. Viktor watches him with the same expression, and suddenly Yuuri thinks: _I can’t read him at all._

 

* * *

 

 

The room’s walls are painted pale beige, the kind that might have been white before the passage of time set in. There’s a brighter patch of light just in Yuuri’s line of sight, a rectangle sharp enough that he squints his eyes a bit, unused to the brightness. He thinks it must be the sun; and it must be early morning if the sun casts such rays of dawn on the wall.

It’s the curtains, he thinks. They didn’t think to draw them in properly last night.

It seems like they didn’t think about too many things. Yuuri takes his time to mull over them now. His thoughts are sluggish, too slow, and he’s careful with them. It feels as if the moment is going to fade away if he’s too hasty.

He turns his gaze away from the glowing patch of yellow on the wall. It takes Yuuri forever to look at Viktor; he’s peaceful and silent and his hair is almost the sun’s colour. If Yuuri shifted just a tiny bit, he could kiss his golden freckles. But he doesn’t. Yuuri is so close. He watches and watches and tries not to blink, not to breathe.

He makes sure to take shallow, quiet breaths, his body as still as possible under the rumpled white covers. The heat of Viktor’s body reaches him and he’s itching. There’s a tingle of warmth until his skin that is no longer surprising, not when this is the sixth time Yuuri as woken up like this, helpless.

They stay like this, so close and so apart, one sound asleep and one awake. Yuuri doesn’t move until the bright patch of light on the wall fades, the sun travels and the Earth moves a distance much shorter than the one to Viktor’s heart.

 

* * *

 

It begins gradually.

Yuuri watches: Mikhail’s face relaxes and tenses and relaxes again, and there it is, not quite a twitch, not quite a tick, and then Mikhail is gone and there stands Viktor.

He looks softer than Mikhail in the pale pink of dust. They’re filming during the golden hour and there’s really no time to take a break, but Viktor Nikiforov is nothing but persistent, and even Minako Okukawa falls for his charms, indulgent almost as much as she is towards Yuuri.

Yuuri thinks it’s because of Viktor’s reputation – so aloof and so mysterious, and yet he sometimes sports this dorkish smile on his face that makes Yuuri think of the way they all put on faces, constantly shifting.

He wonders whether they’re ever truly themselves and he doesn’t know. Perhaps at night; but even then they seek their other selves in dreams. Perhaps this is really what Minako’s film is about, he thinks – seeking.

He seeks Viktor’s face now and he’s not disappointed. Viktor looks back at him, thoughtful; and Yuuri is not surprised at that.

It didn’t go well, the scene they are filming; Yuuri felt detached somehow, as if he were watching himself twice removed, and there was an undercurrent stiffness in Viktor’s shoulders whenever Yuuri touched them.

And didn’t Yuuri touch him a lot, his hands soft and uncertain and very much his, Yuuri’s, and not M.’s – and Yuuri has enough background in dance to know what he is doing wrong, and when he is doing it, and he doesn’t have nearly enough background in  - _all of it –_ to let go of himself and become M.

Viktor seems to sense it, too – of course he is. Yuuri can’t stand this failure.

Yet as Viktor waves at him, he walks up, drawn like to moth to a flame. The set around them looks suddenly empty, even though the props are all there, complete with Yuuri’s own tattered ballet shoes and his old bottle of water, both of which Minako insisted they use for authenticity.

“Yuuri,” Viktor says once they’re almost as close as moment before while they were filming. He reaches out and the gesture is very slow, careful, deliberate. He touched Viktor’s wrist, just above the hand. Yuuri lets him.

They were supposed to film the very same gesture moments ago and it looked so stilted that Yuuri couldn’t believe it – he had done better acting on the set of his first movie, ages ago.

“I’ve been thinking,” Viktor says. “We – we need more.”

It’s what Yuuri thinks, too, but he’s not one to voice such things. He has always needed more, ever since his first award nomination, and also later, since he realized nominations were all he’d get. Yuuri’s entire life was about getting more and getting better, and instead, he got antsy when he was supposed to touch Viktor Nikiforov.

Now he lets Nikiforov lead them both away from the set and into Nikiforov’s trailer. Yuuri thinks he should feel something when he enters it – it’s as close to a shrine as he can imagine – but all he feels is sadness. There’s not much there, and nothing personal, even though there’s much more space than in Yuuri’s. Neat bottles of cosmetics are lined up in front of the mirror, and there’s a sofa there with a white and blue spread thrown over it. It looks handmade and expensive and somehow very cold.

“I thought we could practice the scene here, Yuuri,” Viktor says now, “somewhere we’re not so tense.”

Yuuri is the very definition of tense, so close to Viktor and in his space. He doesn’t say it.

“Okay,” he says.

They know the scene: it starts with soft hovering hands and touches like ghosts of brushes on their faces. It moves, but slowly, the way the sun rises. It takes ages  although for Yuuri it always passes too quickly because he hurries, scared – for them to link their fingers and then to dance.

There’s no room to dance here, but Yuuri knows – they will not go this far.

“It’s hard,” Yuuri tells Nikiforov when they sit on the sofa, mirroring each other. This is how they start the scene; it should be their second nature by now. It’s not.

“It is,” Nikiforov agrees. Yuuri thinks that maybe if he managed to call him Viktor in his mind, things would be easier. They’re not.

They both make their first gestures, slow like they have learnt by now, and they both see they can’t click. _This is Mikhail,_ Yuuri thinks, _he has just seen you dance for the whole night, and you have wanted to kiss him for ages, but you’re too shy and he’s too closed-off, and neither of you knows what to do with this long, quiet moment._

“It’s not working,” Yuuri says. They don’t know what to do – not in the way their characters don’t, but they’re really just simply helpless.

Whatever flickers in Viktor’s face, it’s another minute thing Yuuri can’t interpret. It makes his hand twitch and Viktor eyes this gesture, unreadable.

“Let’s try again,” he says.

They do try again. It’s even harder than Yuuri thought it could be, as if all of their movements were dragged through molasses, suspended in time. Yuuri had never felt this much like an actor before, his whole body whispering to him: this is fake.

They try the scene over and over again, and it feels like hours even though none pass. Yuuri chants in his head, _this is Mikhail, this is Mikhail,_ but all he sees is Viktor Nikiforov’s faraway face. He has always been faraway, a distant star that Yuuri burnt to collide with, and now he wondered whether it was going to remain like this forever: Viktor, aloof and closed-off, and Yuuri, wanting.

He doesn’t know when they fall asleep. When he wakes up, it is to a low, impossible warmth that spreads on his skin like summer. He doesn’t want to open his eyes.

“We should do this again,” a soft voice speaks into his ears and Yuuri tenses, his whole body rigid and stiff, his mind blank.

Viktor Nikiforov is next to him, his arm around Yuuri’s torso, his foot somewhere between Yuuri’s calves, his breath tingling on Yuuri’s skin, sunrise dancing on his cheekbones so that he struggles to blink his eyes open.

“What,” Yuuri says, and it doesn’t even sound like a question.

“This,” Nikiforov replies, vaguely. “Cuddling. I mean – we didn’t mean to, I suppose? But it feels – nice.”

It does, or it did. Yuuri doesn’t say it because he’s not sure himself. They’re both too still for the confusion in Yuuri’s mind.

“Maybe – maybe it would help,” Yuuri finally says. “With the film, I mean. We could, I don’t know – we could try?”

 

* * *

 

 

Minako’s face is framed by a soft puff of smoke and illuminated by the reddish light of the pub they’re sitting in. Yuuri feels like the smoke seeps into his clothes and he’d rather step outside and breathe fresher air, but he’s here with Minako, suffocating.

“It’s not like lighting a match,” she says. “Sometimes you have to wait for the spark.”

Yuuri sips his beer with more restraint that she downs her sake; she’s drunk, and she makes little sense, or so Yuuri thinks. They have both had a tough day, one of those when nothing worked out, no matter how much they tried. Minako grew snappish and Yuuri grew smaller, and Victor grew more aloof, distant like a falling star. Minako had told them in the morning: “You’re going to film the biggest scene today” – and it was a mistake, no question about it: no matter how hard Yuuri reached out, his character was too far to touch.

“What do you mean?” Yuuri ask now. He never liked it when she spoke in riddles. _Conditions of Luminescence_ is a complicated enough film, the plot entangled and unsettling. He doesn’t need any more of this kind of talk.

“Your character, and Victor’s,” she mumbles. “This is not how you reach out. You’re both too impatient. You’ll get that light – but not like with the match. It’s more like – I don’t know. Maybe the sun rising?”

She blows up a puff of smoke right at Yuuri’s face. He squints and she laughs, mean.

“Wait for him,” she says. “And make him wait. And then – then, let him blind you.”

Hours later, Yuuri wakes up, the light soft in the hotel room like a blanket, Victor Nikiforov by his side, sound asleep, his arm thrown over Yuuri’s belly, hugging him close. Yuuri’s thoughts stir.

The character he plays might not be blinded yet – but Yuuri is.

  

* * *

 

 

By now, Yuuri knows by heart both Viktor’s lines and his, and yet he still feels as if he didn’t know them at all. He closes his eyes, willing himself to forget about all of it, the film, the scene, the dialogue – and he all but melts against the warmth of Viktor’s side, sunbeams flashing against his eyelids.

It’s hot in the trailer. It’s filled with the kind of hot air that curls the silver strands of Viktor’s hair and makes Yuuri struggle to breathe, as if there were something much heavier than Viktor’s head resting on Yuuri’s chest.

“I’ve never done it before,” Viktor then says, softly, into the silence.

Yuuri opens his eyes at that, and then closes them shut again. It’s much too bright.

“You’ve never done what?” he asks. They are not continuing any topic, he thinks; or maybe they’ve been having an ongoing conversation for weeks now, one that Yuuri hasn’t even noticed.

“This” Viktor says. Yuuri feels the way his body shifts when he makes a circle with his hand. “Cuddling.”

Viktor has said these two words before, and Yuuri’s life changed then, instantly easing into these cuddling session they now held. He now thinks that he walked into this embrace completely out of context.

“Really?” he asks because he doesn’t know what else to say. It doesn’t seem likely that Viktor lacked opportunities in the past; he’s – Viktor. Yuuri would cuddle him in a heartbeat.

Yuuri did end up cuddling him in a heartbeat, holding him as if he were made of glass.

He’s Viktor, and Yuuri has watched how his long fingers itch for the script, how he lives and breathes his art. He doesn’t believe that many others get to see him like this.

“It can be consuming, our work,” he agrees, opening his eyes again and squinting against the light. Perhaps he understands. He still carries with him the softness of Hasetsu summers, of the moments when he fell asleep on the grass with Yuuko and Takeshi, all of them exhausted and as happy as ever. Perhaps Viktor doesn’t have any memory to carry with him.

Yuuri would, perhaps, hope to give him one, but he doesn’t dare.

Viktor’s breathing is oddly still, as if he were afraid of what Yuuri was going to do. So Yuuri reaches his hand and begins to softly stroke Viktor’s hair, quiet.

He hates it, he hates it with all his heart that in this moment it clicks: he knows what emotions are missing from their scene. Viktor deserves more than this, more than Yuuri’s attention divided between him and the script, more than Yuuri’s mind in overdrive.

He can’t help it, he sighs. Viktor is warm and silent, and smells of something precious. Yuuri closes his eyes again. The scene plays out in his mind, over and over again, transformed beyond recognition, perfect.

  

* * *

 

 

 

The set is like a beehive, Yuuri thinks.

Minako’s assistant runs after him in his jazz dance shoes, mumbling something about the lighting that Yuuri can’t understand, so far removed it is from his headspace. Minako herself is absent, dealing with a minor crisis somewhere, and Yuuri thinks it’s a pity; he could use a talk or a hug, or both, but all he got is Minami and his animated gestures, and then it gets even worse when they run into Phichit.

Phichit is their camera operator, but for now his filming with his phone, glancing around with a suspicious smirk on his face. He lights up when he sees Yuuri, and Yuuri’s mind helpfully provides him with a flashback to their college years, during which Yuuri was prone to becoming a meme at least once per semester, courtesy of Phichit.

There’s some chatting and some more posing. There are some more people, too, like Sara the assistant propmaster, who always drags Yuuri to parties, and her brother Michele who does make-up. Soon Yuuri is lost to a pleasant buzz, and some of his initial tension leaves his shoulders. They’re all part of this film, Yuuri thinks. He doesn’t join in the chatter, but a smile won’t leave his face. A strange feeling settles over them, a kind of slowed-down urgency that tells them they shouldn’t really steal this moment, there’s work to be done. But Minako sees them and winks and Yuuri is sure she will walk up to them soon with a smirk and a hearty joke, and they relax into their impromptu space, carefree.

It’s almost fitting that the next moment is framed like a scene in a movie; a wide shot, encompassing all of them and their laughter, and there he is, silent behind a discarded folding reflector, his eyes thoughtful as he watches them: Viktor.

It’s as if the buzz softened around Yuuri. His feet move first and only then does his mind catch up, and by the time Yuuri realizes he’s walking, he’s already close enough to count all the freckles on Viktor’s nose, still unhidden by Michele’s concealer.

“Hi,” he says into the space between their hearts, “Viktor, would you – would you like to join us?”

  

* * *

 

 

He would, apparently.

Yuuri is glad that he did. Later, when the sun almost sets and colours the walls of Viktor’s trailer golden orange, they cuddle on the sofa and Yuuri’s heart is as soft as the strands of Viktor’s hair.

Watching Viktor surround himself with people, hesitant like a cat, was one of the moments Yuuri is going to remember years later. It’s already one of the memories as fleeting as gossamer. Yuuri needs to take care of it, can’t let t go – he can’t lose the way Viktor’s smile slowly transformed from the polished fake to a real thing, a bit bitter but delighted, the kind of smile you can send someone after eating a grapefruit. Yuuri thinks – quietly, to himself, as if Viktor had an ability to read his thoughts and Yuuri had to be very private about it – that Viktor might not be very used to smiling.

Yuuri once thought Viktor was made of glass, so fragile, and now he knows how wrong he was. He almost says something but then thinks against it.

“The scene went well today,” he only says. His breathe makes Viktor’s hair dance.

Viktor hums and that’s all Yuuri gets for an answer. It’s enough.

  

* * *

 

 

“I thought you hated that part,” M. says, a tinge of uncertainty in his voice. The dance studio is dimly lit; they shouldn’t even be there, in the greyness of dawn. They kept dancing late after the practice, late into the night. M feels tiredness creep into his calves. “Whenever we practiced that, you looked as if you wanted to be anywhere else in the world.”

 _Am I this repulsive,_ he doesn’t say. He thinks it into the aether.

Mikhail stretches in front of him, stubbornly looking ahead, into the mirror. It’s through the mirror that he locks his eyes with M.’s, removed from their conversation in the only way he can manage.

(It’s going to be a two shot, Yuuri thinks. He knows how Minako’s genius works.)

“I don’t hate this part,” Mikhail replies.

“You didn’t hate it today,” M. says.

“I don’t think I can hate at all,” Mikhail speaks then, softer, almost like a sigh. “I don’t know how.”

He turns his head towards M. then. It’s a smooth, birdlike movement. M. has watched him for hours, for days, he has had his eyes on Mikhail when they were dancing, but he never saw him move like this. Perhaps he has just witnessed something precious.

And once he moves his head, the rest of his body seems to follow until his feet touch M.’s on the floor. Wordlessly, they lean into a stretch together, hands grasped and questions unasked. It’s not long before Mikhail’s face is illuminated by the first yellow beams of light, and M., stunned, feels the kind of emotions he has only ever felt when dancing.

This is when Mikhail lets go of M.’s hands and brings his fingers to M.’s face instead, tender, careful. M. holds his breath.

It takes a long, fluttering moment before M. touches Mikhail back. Their fingers dance. No one says anything, but M. can hear the echoes of their breathing. The morning light pours into the room and lights it up in all the shades of gold.

“Cut!” a sharp voice says.

Viktor’s hand stays warm against Yuuri’s cheek. There’s now something new and impossibly intimate in his expression, similar to Mikhail’s but richer, closer. Yuuri smiles and leans against his hand.

They stay like this even after the lighting fades.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! 
> 
> I'm lurking here on tumblr.


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